FRISCO — Major League Soccer is beginning to grow starting next season with the next two expansion teams — Inter Miami FC and Nashville SC — joining in 2020. Inter Miami will join the Eastern Conference while Nashville SC will join the West — which means FC Dallas will have another conference foe added to the schedule.
But since MLS will be adding two new teams to the fold, the schedule in the foreseeable future will change in a big way. Currently, all MLS teams play each other at least once per season, but that is going to change starting in 2020.
"Each club will continue to play a 34-game regular season with 17 home matches and 17 away matches," MLS wrote in a release. "Every team will play their 12 intra-conference opponents twice – once home and once away for a total of 24 matches – with the other 10 regular-season matches coming against the opposite conference. Those inter-conference opponents will be revealed with the full 2020 schedule release."
FC Dallas will face Nashville SC two times next year along with the rest of the west, but the small detail that stands out is the 10 other regular season matches. There are 13 teams in each conference, so FC Dallas will no longer play every Eastern Conference side once-a-year. This will be the first time FC Dallas will experience this, so the emphasis on beating teams in the west will be even greater — especially seeing how things played out in the final weeks leading up to 2019's Decision Day.
It is yet to be seen if MLS will add more games as the rest of the expansion teams — Austin FC, St. Louis, Sacramento and another unnamed team — join the picture, and Nashville SC could also possibly switch conferences within a few years because of so many expansion teams located in the west.
